support
Rally Behind a Great Idea
Your voice matters. Show your support for submitted projects by leaving a comment, sharing your story or photo, or posting to social media. Every bit of encouragement helps communities grow stronger together.
What is this project about?
Root & River: Before First Breath and Beyond — Walking Together is a community-based prenatal and early-childhood wellness initiative designed to help families build strong foundations from pregnancy through a child’s earliest months.
Root & River brings expectant parents, parents, caregivers and babies together in a welcoming learning environment where evidence-informed health education is combined with practical activities, conversation, cultural responsiveness and community connection.
The pilot uses an intimate small-group model so families can learn, ask questions and build relationships. Sessions explore attachment and responsive caregiving, feeding and growth, sleep and emotional wellness, play and early development. Prenatal learning is woven throughout, recognizing that nurturing relationships and healthy development begin before birth.
Families participate in hands-on developmental and parent-child activities and leave with practical information they can use at home. Programming recognizes that families bring different cultures, languages, traditions and lived experiences, and creates space for those strengths to be respected within the learning experience.
Root & River also addresses something less visible but equally important: isolation. By bringing families together in familiar community spaces, the project creates opportunities for relationships to grow between parents, caregivers and their community.
The goal is not simply to give families information. It is to help them leave feeling more knowledgeable, more confident, more connected and less alone.
Why is this project important to the community?
Pregnancy and the earliest months of a child’s life can be filled with joy, but they can also bring uncertainty, isolation and an overwhelming amount of information. Families do not all enter parenthood with the same access to trusted information, supportive relationships or community resources.
Durham Region is home to families with diverse cultures, languages, traditions and lived experiences. Some are navigating parenthood away from extended family or familiar support networks. Others may face financial, social, cultural or language barriers that make it more difficult to participate in traditional programs or feel represented within them.
Root & River creates a welcoming place where families can learn together without judgment. Practical prenatal and early-childhood learning is combined with opportunities to talk, connect and participate in activities that strengthen the caregiver-child relationship.
Locating programming within accessible community spaces also helps families discover resources already around them and begin relationships that can continue after the program ends.
Investing early has value beyond a single session or cohort. When caregivers feel informed, connected and confident, they are better equipped to respond to their children, seek help when needed and participate in their community.
Strong communities begin with relationships—and some of the most important relationships begin long before words.
Target Completion Date
June 30, 2027
Location
55 Harwood Ave S, Ajax, ON L1S 2H8
Ajax
L1S 2H8